Merlin and the Spear of Destiny
by carlgluftgmail.com
Summary: An ancient time traveller with a young man's face must correct the time meddling of a demoniac cabal he fought when he wore an older man's face: the National Institute of Coordinated Experiments
1. Chapter 1

"You would think you could get a decent hotdog in Vienna," complained our fresh faced, ancient time travelling friend as we entered the museum.

"Merlin, surely, we didn't come all the way to twentieth century Vienna to eat a hotdog," said my golden haired fiancee, Robyn.

"Of course not," replied Merlin. "I'm trying to find a nice place for you and Mike to get married. I just figured that since weiners originated here, we could get a decent lunch."

"How is a hotdog a decent lunch?" I asked. "Perhaps we should try Frankfort instead. But Merlin, surely we're not go ng to get married in a museum!"

"No, Mike! Don't be silly. But since we are in Vienna, I wanted to take you to the here is a special treasure of the Hapsburgs. Being Catholic, I thought you'd appreciate seeing it. There it is: the Spear of Destiny!"

"The Lance of Longinus, the Spear that pierced Christ's side?" I asked, a shiver going up my spine.

"The very same," said Merlin.

"The case is empty," announced Robyn.

The display case our babyfaced wizard pointed to was empty. Only s faded velvet cushion laid there."

"Where os it?" demanded Merlin as he passed through the crowd towards one of the museum workers.

"I figure it must be out to be polished, or something ," said Robyn.

"Merlin seemed quite up in arms over its absence," I observed. "Here he is."

"There's something very wrong here," said Merlin, worry creasing his long, young face.

"Maybe it's being polished," I suggested, echoing Robyn's idea.

"The Curator said the Spear was never recovered after World War Two."

"Well, that's not right. I seem to recall an American army officer recovered it."

"Yes, Mike. His name was Lieutenant Walter William Horn."

"What does it all mean?" asked Robyn.

"It means someone has changed history in a major way," said a greatly perturbed Merlin. "The Spear of Destiny is nexus pivotal points in human history."

"What do we do?" I asked.

Merlin's boyish smile returned, and he ," We'll just have to change history back."


	2. Chapter 2

The outside of Merlin's conjuror's cabinet was a simple blue box, but inside it was a sprawling labyrinth of twisting bulkheads and endless companion ways. The control room just inside was a vast three storey affair, with a brilliant power shaft dominating its center. In the midst of that glass column crystal spheres bobbed up and down as Merlin circled the anachronistic controls mounted around the power shaft.

"Where are we going?" asked Robyn.

"Nuremberg," answered Merlin as he pulled levers abd spun dials, "the thirtieth of April, nineteen forty-five. I'm trying to get us there before ten after two in the afternoon."

"Why ten after two?" I asked.

"That's when Lieutenant Horn takes possession of the Spear of Destiny," explained Merlin as the globes in the column ceased their rise and fall, indicating that Merlin's cabinet had materialized

"How do you know that this is when time was altered?" asked Robyn.

Pressing a key on an antique typewriter mounted on one panel on the column, Merlin turned on the giant circular viewscreen mounted on a walk near the cabinet's exterior doors. A blasted city sprawled in the screen, obviously bombed out by some terrible war.

"Nuremberg on the day the American's liberated it from the Nazi terror," explained Merlin as he descended a ramp from the control platform to the cabinet's exterior door. "This is a week point in time. This afternoon, anything could happen. All of time and space lies in the balance. We have to make certain that the Americans, not the Nazis take possession of the Spear. Come along you two."

We emerged from the cabinet and walked about the smoking ruins of Nuremberg. Not long after, Merlin pointed out towards a bombed out section of the city. A tunnel could be clearly seen.

"That's it!" shouted Merlin. "That's the tunnel leading to the bunker that the Spear was found in."

The sound of gunfire rang out from the nearby tunnel. A soldier in an olive drab uniform was backing out of the tunnel firing his sidearm blindly. Energy bolts from some beam weapon shot out of the tunnel. The soldier ran out of rounds and turned about to run. A metal sphere, less than a meter in diameter, flew out of the tunnel. Energy bolts shot forth from the floating sphere. The soldier ran in and out of rubble, barely evading the deadly rays.

"I.C.E. heads!" cried Robyn as she drew her Space Guard sidearm that she kept in her purse.

"The Institute for Coordinated Experiments?" I asked.

"That's them," said Merlin who suddenly took a rather comic looking double take at Robyn's fusion gun. "What are you doing with a gun. How many times have I told you, no guns?"

The soldier was nearing us, the flying sphere quicky closing on him.

"What is that thing?" I asked as I drew my sidearm that I kept concealed in my suit jacket.

"What is with the guns?" demanded an angry Merlin. Just as I targeted the I.C.E. Head Merlin pulled the gun from my hand and tossed it aside. At that same moment one of the metal monster's energy bolts hit the soldier.

"Damn it, Merlin!" I shouted. "I could have saved him."

As soon as the soldier fell, the flying sphere ceased its fire and returned to the tunnel.

"He's dead," pronounced Robyn who had been the first to leave cover and attend to the soldier.

"I could have saved him," I said as Merlin and I joined Robyn.

"Merlin, look," said a visibly angry Robyn.

The man wore the bars of an American Army lieutenant. On a patch above a pocket on his green shirt was the name "Horn".

"We failed," I sighed.


	3. Chapter 3

"Don't give up hope yet," said Merlin. "He's still breathing! But he's losing blood fast."

Merlin pulled out a roll of gauze and a pouch of surgical tools from the pocket of his tweed jacket.

"Do you have the whole sickbay in there?" I asked. "I didn't know you were a doctor."

"Don't tell anyone," said Merlin in all seriousness. "I'm trying to keep it a secret lately. Too much publicity."

"Excuse me?"

"Mike, pick up your gun."

"You changed your mind about guns, Merlin?"

"Mike," said Robyn, "don't agrivate Merlin."

"The Spear of Destiny is in a bunker at the end of that tunnel. You have to get it, and I need to save Horn's life and bring him around again."

"Right!" I replied as I grabbed my sidearm.

"I'm coming too," insisted Robyn brandishing her fusion gun.

"It's too dangerous!"

"When I was your XO on the Excalibur we fought side by side in some dangerous situations. Now that I'm your fiancee it's too dangerous."

"Robyn, that was the Space Guard. This is Merlin's life! There's more danger in one of his days than there is in our ten years of diverting asteroids and boarding spaceships."

"We don't have time to argue!" shouted Merlin as he cut away the lieutenant's uniform to get to the wound. "Robyn, go with Mike."

"You're pretty quick to put my fiancee in danger," I said.

"Mike, Robyn's been travelling with me longer than you have. Remember? She knows what she's in for. Do you? She's fought the Heads before. You haven't. Now, go! We haven't much time!"

Robyn grabbed my hand, and said, "Let's go."

The Nazis had some lights strung up in the tunnel, but the power was out. I asked, "Do you have a light?"

"I don't think so," replied Robyn. "Merlin usef to wear that suit you have on when I first met him. Check its pockets"

I rifled through the pockets of the old, pinstriped suit and immediately my hand fell upon a slim flashlight, what Merlin and Robyn would call a "pen torch".

"So that flying sphere is the head of I.C.E.?" I asked.

"One of them," Robyn answered.

"How many chiefs does this outfit got?"

"That's not the kind of head these things are. Mike, they're literally heads. I.C.E., known at the time as N.I.C.E., the 'N' standing for National first successfully kept a human head alive back in 1948."

"Robyn, it's 1945."

"They're time travellers, Mike, just like us. This is obviously from the future."

"Why would they keep a head alive without a body?"

"They believe they can use the Head to channel some kind of supersensible beings, creatures as far above us as we are above microbes. In fact they call their channelled, unseen masters 'Macrobes'."

"Technobable for demons."

"Mister Amfortas used to associate them with our Christian conception of demons"

"So, we're fighting hell itself."

"Mike, it's them," Robyn whispered as we saw a bright light at the end of the tunnel. "Turn off the torch and e quiet."

As Robyn and I crept forward in the dark, we say the silvery sphere floating on the cramped bunker at the end of the tunnel. Two Nazi soldiers were shining their flashlights on the metal wall of the bunker. "What was that?" asked a soldier as he swung his light in our general direction. "There is something in the tunnel with us."

"Negative," buzzed the grating mechanical voice of the Head. "My auditory sensors have detected no sounds. Resume your duties. Fetch the Spear!"

I signalled Robyn to take raised my pistol, and had the left soldier in her sights. It seemed a bit unjust to shoot him in the back, but I remembered that we were fighting Ultimate Evil.

"Now!" I ordered as I fired my own sidearm.

I squeezed the trigger. My first target fell to the fusion energy that lanced from my gun. Robyn's target crumbled, rolled on the ground, and came up with his rifle in his hands.

A blast of energy ripped forth from the Head barely missing us. The Nazi soldier

And the Head pressed on, firing. Robyn and I held our ground and fired other soldier fell, but much of our fusion bolts simply reflected off the smooth metal shell of the Head.

"Well, honey," I said to Robyn at my side, "It looks like we'll be going together."

"I wouldn't have it any other way," she replied.


	4. Chapter 4

"Keep firing!" cried Merlin as he charged into the bunker. He ran up to the madly firing sphere, and raised his silver "magic wand". With a low hum grom the wand pointed at the sphere, sparks flew from the sphere and it popped open revealing a human head suspended amidst wires and hoses. One of our blaster bolts hit the sphere"s exposed interior destroying its wiring and blackening the Head.

The jaw of the burnt head moved, but its voice was electronic, emanating from some hidden speaker. "You have defeated us this time, Atlantean, but you can't be everywhere."

"Nor can you," added Merlin.

"But we can! There are many more of us, now. We have tome travel technology. All the Universe is within our grasp.

"Planet after planet, system after system, galaxy after galaxy will be forced to sustain us, everywhere and forever!

"On every world, chemical substitution will replace the atmosphere. All vegetation will be removed, then all other organisms. We will introduce reproduction without copulation. There will only be Heads!"

"Oh, shut up!" shouted Merlin as he pointed his wand at the Head. All the machinery stopped as the wand let out yet another hum, and the Head's jaw just hung motionless in its burnt, wiry web.

"Merlin, you killed it!" gasped Robyn.

"It was already dead," muttered Merlin. "It was never alive. At least, not like this. Who knows whose head this belong to in life?"

"What do the I.C.E. Heads want with the Spear of Longinus." I asked.

"It's not for nothin that the spear that pierced Christ's side is called the 'Spear of Destiny'", explained Merlin as he led us out of the tunnel. "Kings and emperors ruled by it for centuries. I.C.E. thought having possessed the Spear that pierced the Son of God justified their divine right to rule. Just think how the Spear falling into the hands of ruthless, godless technocracy like the Institute for Coordinated Experiments would have crushed the faith of so many. How's my patient?"

We left the tunnel, and there waiting for us wad Lieutenant Horne."

"Fine, Doctor," replied the soldier with a broad smile, his shoulder properly dressed.

"I prefer Merlin these days. Since you are on your feet, go down the tunnel to the bunker. There's something very precous in there: and ancient spearhead. Make certain it gets to General Eisenhower. Got that? Eisenhower, not Patton. Off you go then,"

"Yes, sir, Merlin," said Horne as he entered the tunnel.

"I was kind of hoping we would get a look at the Spear," I said.

"We will get a very nice look at it at the Hofburg in 1990, where it will be safe behind glass," said Merlin as he led us back to his conjuror's cabinet.

The End.


End file.
